Star Wars Rey Costume Part 9 – Gloves

In this segment of The Force Awakens Rey costume series, we take a readily available climbing glove and transform it into a Rey style scavenger glove!

Rey uses rough looking leather climbing style gloves with fabric openings over the knuckle areas as she scavenges the desert planet of Jakku. These climbing gloves made by Petzl are almost identical to Rey’s gloves, except for the cuffs and coloring. They are available from Amazon or possibly sporting goods stores, but I was able to obtain this pre-owned pair from another Rey cosplayer.

The cuffs were already removed on this pair, but they can be easily removed using a hobby knife or seam ripper tool. I created new cuffs, approximately 2 inches wide, from some thin scrap leather. By folding over one edge of the leather and gluing it with contact cement, I created a finished edge on the exposed end of the cuff.

If you don’t have leather, scrap pieces are available from most hobby stores or Tandy Leather. Old chairs or discarded leather furniture are also a great source for scrap leather. I was able to attach the cuffs to the Petzl gloves with a sewing machine, but the stiching could be done by hand using a needle and thread.

Once the cuffs were attached, I stripped off some of the existing finish on the gloves by rubbing them with medium grit sandpaper and an alcohol soaked rag, so the leather would accept the dark brown dye. I used Eco Flo dark brown antique gel leather dye and applied it with a cotton cloth. It took 2 applications to achieve the dark antique coloring. I found using a cotton swab made it easier to apply the dye to some of the small areas between the fingers of the gloves.

After I was satisfied with the color, I used some watered down acrylic paint in gray, black, rust and brown colors to darken the fabric areas of the gloves. Then I sealed the leather with an acrylic satin polyurethane, available from any hobby store.

The completed Petzl gloves look old, worn and discolored from scavenging ships, just like Rey’s in Star Wars the Force Awakens!